


ardor of the ice maiden

by corollary



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Meta, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corollary/pseuds/corollary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They're not yours," he would say. "They're people." She didn't listen, but when did she ever?</p>
            </blockquote>





	ardor of the ice maiden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sabeth/gifts).



The first time Squall junctioned Shiva, he was fourteen years old.

Green Years, they called it in the Garden. The brief period between the delusions of childhood and the cold realities of adulthood, punctuated with gangly limbs and the timbre of his voice struggling to take shape.

There were other things, too — girls giggling behind their hands as they loitered outside the boy's training centre changing rooms, the increasingly late hours of curfew and whispered secrets of secret areas and what went on in them.

Quistis, in particular, was infuriating; in the way only girls knew how to be.

The Junctioning was bad at first, really. Shiva's touch was like ice coating the roof mouth and if he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the crunch of white snow he had never seen under boots he had never worn. But the cold didn't fade, his body didn't adjust. It became a blizzard instead — an onslaught of ice and snow that only he could see, ice water filling his mouth like a swelling tide, rising higher and higher.

He ended up huddled over a toilet, bile mixing with ice water to leave an unholy taste in his mouth.

Quistis was waiting for him outside the facility door. Her eyes were bluer than usual. "Don't worry," she told him, but she sounded almost amused and he had to grit his teeth. "The first time is always the worst."

She skipped off after that, inasmuch as someone like Quistis could skip. Squall sulked in the direction of her long fled shadow for a time before returning to the class.

He kept Shiva junctioned as much as she could. The GF accompanied him throughout all his classes, a blue spot in his mind glowing with soundless laughter. She was everywhere, in her own way — in the gleaming line of his razor blade, in the first sip of his inevitably cold tea, in Quistis's unendingly blue gaze. Her shape was a silhouette in the back of his mind, the curves of someone who was very much a female — but they were too long, a vast presence he could not comprehend and mold into the simple shape of the girls around him. What she was, there was no word for, so Squall defined her through what she wasn't. That much, he knew: she wasn't them, the infuriating girls who hid behind concealed giggles and blue eyes.

Their exchanges were kept to a minimum. _Can I have this_? she would ask, gazing down at some memory — his first taste of ice cream, or his first lost tooth. He would say yes; he always said yes. The word no didn't exist, not to her.

One day, he asked why. Lying on his bed, tracing the cover of his Advanced Espionage Techniques book with his fingers; he should have been reading, but the coolness of her voice belled sweet and loud and he couldn't resist. "Why do you want my memories?"

_Because_, she said, _I have none of my own_.

Fourteen became fifteen not long after and with it, even more changes. His body settled into a temporary stalemate as he grew easier in his limbs, adjusting to the new inches of height.

Shiva was agitated and restless.

His ice coated world grew warmer after the first round of SeeD preliminary exams. They weren't his: he didn't have nearly enough credits, and fifteen was considered too young anyway. (Blue eyed Quistis was the exception, but wasn't she always?) It belonged to them, the upperclassman cadets and soon to be members of SeeD. There was a new fire to them, surging red waves in the back of their gazes and making his heart race. Shiva longed to drink in that fire, to wrap herself around it and let it destroy her in whatever way it would.

It was a few months of sleepless nights, Shiva's desire pressing on him like cinderblocks on his chest, before he asked Quistis about it.

At sixteen, she was the youngest SeeD on record and was a teaching assistant to Instructor Aki. She was also one of the red ones; just being near her meant Shiva's breath was cold and demanding on his neck.

"The GFs take what the user is already experiencing and amplifies it," Quistis explained. The laughter in her voice was a lot harder to hear this time around. "What you're going through is the natural changes of adolescence compounded with a GF's desire to harvest its opposite element."

"Harvest," he repeated through wooden lips.

"Yes." She looked up at him through her blue gaze, her mouth almost a smile. Opposite elements. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. It settles down after about a year."

He balked at that. "A year!"

There were surges of red everywhere -- in the hollow of her throat, in the quirk of her lips. "A year," she repeated. "Or you could request to be relieved of your junction."

Shiva's protests were like an ice storm unleashed, knotting his breastbone with pure fear. Quistis's eyes grew bluer underneath his gaze and he recognised Shiva's touch.

"No," he said, when he could say anything. "I won't."

"Well then." She went back to grading papers.

Squall forced himself to look away from the deft and light movements of her hands. "What do you have junctioned?"

"Ifrit." Quistis didn't look back up at him. "Others too, but Ifrit is the one you're concerned about."

Shiva's storm became a tepid wave of longing. That name -- Ifrit -- surged through his skull. "Can I junction Ifrit?"

Quistis shook her head. "Ifrit junctioning is a standard part of the SeeD preliminary examination. You'll have to wait until then." Her movements ceased briefly. "Besides, it's... noisy."

Her last word tinged with something he couldn't name, Squall let the subject drop.

Shiva only grew louder and more tempestuous after that. Squall did consider unjunctioning her a few times, but was met with begging hands and tears made of ice. If he was to be kind of someone, it might as well be the being lodged in his head.

Instead, Squall would try to sooth her by offering different and select memories for her to take: the first time a girl had kissed him, thirteen year old Katris with soft lips on his cheek and the smell of apricots; getting Seifer in trouble for destroying a library book and watching him mop the hallways to make up for the damage; his first kill -- a Bite Bug in the Training Centre -- and the smell of its blood as it shuddered its last beneath his feet. They were the things he cherished, the fragments of existence that made him feel like a person and not an ID number in a vast queue of toy soldiers. He gave them all to her, and it was enough... until it wasn't.

_That_, Shiva would whisper, _or that_. Splashes of red followed the force of her gaze through his eyes. Sometimes it was the grey eyed girl who did most of Instructor Quel's paperwork for him. Sometimes it was the young man with the ginger hair shelving books in the back of the library at fifteen hundred hours each day. Shiva knew what she wanted. Ifrit's vessels, she called them. Their names were of no importance. They were simply things -- masks "her" Ifrit wore as an attempt at levity in the game Shiva was determined to win.

Seeing them with Shiva in his head made them beautiful. He didn't know if he would feel the same way without her influence.

"They're not yours," he would say between gritted teeth. "They're people."

_Who, then?_ She would pull away, sulky. She would find a corner of his memories -- the ones he still had -- and curl up in them.

Like all things, Seifer made it worse. The routine was painfully repetitive, with small variants in expression: sometimes, it was spit balls in the cafeteria; other times, it was sophomoric pranks like pretending to be Squall on the Garden message board and directing lewd messages toward whatever Instructor seemed the least appealing. Sometimes it was pure aggression, snide taunts and assertions of superiority to goad Squall into action. Seifer wanted a fight.

On that particular day, it seemed to be the latter. Seifer caught up to Squall in the dormitory hallway and threw one arm around the younger boy's neck, subduing him in a chokehold close enough for their breath to mingle.

"Squally! Just the guy I was lookin' for," he said, sounding for all the world completely at ease despite Squall's struggles.

"Fuck off, Seifer," Squall muttered. There was a sound behind him -- the creaking of the carpeted floor, a half sigh, half grunt. Raijin was there. Fujin too, likely. She was rarely seen apart from the two of them.

"Now now, that's not very nice," Seifer chastised. "I came to tell you the great news!"

Neutralisation tactic A3.1: Attempt the five sensitive areas of the body. Squall considered it before remembering the last time he had been put in the disciplinary room for assaulting a fellow cadet. It wouldn't have been so bad except Seifer had been in there with him, making it quite possibly the longest six hours of his life.

Squall's tone was placid, almost bored. "You found the wedding dress of your dreams?"

There was an amused glow inside his head. _Why Squall_, Shiva intoned, _I had no idea you were in to that sort of thing_.

"Shut. Up," Squall all but growled, finally pulling out of Seifer's grip.

Face to face, the familiar sensations of Shiva's desires hit him like a fist to the gut. Everything that had been in Quistis, the grey eyed girl, the boy in the library -- it was there too: red waves, the coils of Ifrit's power kept together only by the skin of its user, fire and lifeblood and wanting. His eyes traced the line of Seifer's bare arms, the curve of his shoulder up to his neck and jawline.

It was worse when Seifer's gaze softened. Did he feel it too?

Squall pulled himself out of it, pushing past the older boy and his so-called posse and storming back to his room.

"Take it," he demanded, after the door had closed behind him. "I don't want to remember that."

Shiva was unwontedly serious. No. You need that one.

He doesn't argue. There was never a point to arguing -- she knew him better than he did. She didn't know humans, but she knew him.

He went to bed that night dreaming of Ifrit and Quistis and Seifer and those other two. They all shared one face.


End file.
